Monday, September 22, 2008

Liberal platform: Game changer?

HT to Jan from the Bruce on the latest poll numbers from Nanos:

Conservative 35 (-1)
Liberal 30 (-1)
NDP 22 (+2)
Bloc 7 (0)
Green 6 (-1)

(margin of error ± 3.1%)

The most interest shift is in Ontario, where the Liberals are now in the lead 39-31 with Dion picking up three points from yesterday. With the economy continuing to slump, Jim Flaherty's announcement to the world that my home province is not a good place to invest may finally be starting to bite. Ontarians are a normally tolerant people but there's only so much we'll tolerate especially when it involves our pocketbooks.

On to today's major policy announcements. First, Steve Harper says he wants the identities of violent offenders as young as 14 who are convicted to have their names revealed. I actually agree on this in principle, but cannot say that it would have compelled me to change my vote. That's because Harper has offered absolutely nothing to fund rehabilitation programs or has cut back funding for them severely. You can't deal with youth crime unless you deal with the root causes and they are far too many to enumerate. He offers nothing other than $100 a month not indexed and taxed back at rates of 15 - 45% -- which stops being paid anyway once a kid turns six, way too young for the juvenile delinquent system to be involved anyway. That's not leadership.

Second, Stéphane Dion released his platform today, called Richer, Fairer, Greener and it reminds me a fair bit about the original Red Book back in 1993, except this time there is much more emphasis on everywhere we've regressed over just the last two and a half years under the Harper Administration and how we have to get out of it. That I think should be the first focus for the Liberals these final weeks -- hammer often what's happened under Harper. The second should be just how much more we'll be under the American sphere of influence if John McCain pulls off an upset in November; and that the Liberals will be just as tough against the Democrats as they were during the 1990s while Harper will continue to roll over for Big Lumber, Big Oil, and Big Finance no matter who's in charge in the White House.

In short, get in the face of the media (including the columnists) and the corporate interests who want Harper to win, day after day -- and don't give them the chance to hit the kill button. It ain't over until it's over.

UPDATE (4:44 pm EDT, 2044 GMT): Some of you pointed out the NDs are at 22, not 26. Duly noted, and corrected.

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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Game changer as in will further sink the Liberal party? Cause that would be accurate.

Have you read the thing? Have you looked at the numbers? Platitudes and pandering have long been the forte of the LPC but they used to at least make the math add up. They wouldn't deliver on the programs so that would make their surpluses look extra good at the end of each year but at least the numbers made sense.

This thing? Not so much.

Since liberals love NANOS - you may want to look at the trend lines and not just at the daily numbers and then there is the Angus Reid leadership numbers from today:

http://www.nanosresearch.com/election/CPAC-Nanos-September-22-2008E.pdf

http://angusreidstrategies.com/uploads/pages/pdfs/2008.09.22_CANUSA.pdf

Sean S. said...

interesting would be the 4% split between the New Dems and the Libs....If you put any stock in polls.

Anonymous said...

that is correct, but the NDP ,under Nanos, is 22

Jeff said...

you're a little generous with the NDP. they're at 22% according to nanos, not 26.

BlastFurnace said...

I've updated the poll numbers based on your feedback. Typo on my part.

Game changer? It could go either way, to be honest. But it's worth noting the numbers are based on a worst case scenario; not pie in the sky like we've gotten from the Mulroney and Harper years -- and getting deficit numbers that were off year after year.

BlastFurnace said...

I'd rather be off making a worst case scenario and ending having more money, than a best case one and winding up with less.

red and proud said...

The latest Nanos numbers for Ontario (Conservative 31 %, Liberal 39 % NDP 22 % and Green 8 %) are especially positive for the Liberals. Using the Election predictor on the Hill and Knowlton web site I came up with the following:

Cons 18 seats (40 in 2006)

Libs 76 seats (54 in 2006)

NDP 12 seats (12 in 2006)

Green 0 seats (0 in 2006)

Try it out yourself if you like. Here’s the link:

http://predictor.hillandknowlton.ca/predictor/

Anonymous said...

Yeah Harper's policy is just jail all of them for life. Here's a nice video on youtube that compared the Liberal and Conservative policies. One of them is about Liberal's support for social or community services to prevent and treat the source of the problem. Contrast with Conservative's "bandaid" solution of building jails.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmAGeMJAKRg

For Harper, any social program is a bad and evil "socialist" thing. His man Chris Reid said on his blog that Canadians are becoming effeminate because of our socialist system.

I can't believe they are still leading on polls. Their "Dion is weak" ad is working. Harper is borrowing a page from Bush campaign and it's working. Hopefully Canadian would wakeup before it's too late. It's easier to ruin our country with Conservatives cuts and it will be much harder and takes much longer to fix them and reverse the damage.